How to pronounce “moat” in English

A moat, as you know, is a metaphor that Warren Buffett uses to illustrate the idea of a competitive advantage.

The moat was just, what do I got that's great today?

A moat is part and parcel of the business that you're looking at.

that moat can build over time.

a moat.

You build the moat.

saying the moat that MasterCard and Visa have is just as strong as it started at the year.

So what makes a moat grow, I think, is something in the culture of the company.

has this moat around it.

Because absent a moat, competition destroys excess returns-- period, end, full stop.

Big is not a moat.

We introduced the moat ratings at Morningstar in about '01.

Second kind of economic moat is switching costs.

I missed Google's moat.

So these moats to competition continually get eroded.

So the basics of moats is that there are structural and sustainable qualities that are inherent to the business.

So they can create moats.

And so CompuServe has this moat.

You want to own a moat with lots of crocodiles and piranhas in it so competitors don't want to come near your castle.

And then it translates into a moat, and then high return on equity for the shareholders.

That's because money spent on successful moat expansion activities is charged off to P&L.

And then the final type of moat-- cost advantages.

Managers matter in the context of the moat.

That's a pretty good moat.

Typically these are not kind of moat-y businesses.

But Clémence Poésy and Félix Moati, the actors that play Emma and Alain, were able to go to that festival.

So how do you think about growing moats, or emergent moats, versus established moats?

So there's always new companies with moats.

How do we use it for analyzing moated businesses?

So the key here is that moats can buffer management mistakes.

It makes our-- it effectively gives us a moat.

So they said what really matters is that the moat be growing.

and all those great companies that seem to see their moat shrinking.

Warren Buffet describes a competitive advantage as a moat.

And you throw crocodiles and sharks and piranhas in the moat to make it harder and harder for people to swim across and attack the castle.

People were valuing Heelys as if it had a moat.

So you want to rely on patents as a moat when you have a portfolio of them, that it's hard to invalidate one or the other.

And that enabled the ability to build a moat, build a brand in retailing, which is a really tough industry to do that in.

So just to kind of sideline from the moat conversation, but my point here-- I don't want you to go out of here thinking management is irrelevant, because there

Of note, competitive moats that large companies have depended upon are going to be filled in with AI tools.

I was just pulling up the question on Airbnb and moats, and I was hoping you would do exactly

I mean, those moats are not built by angels.

I'm a value investor who focuses on investing in moated businesses in public markets in India.

I am also convinced that buying into scalable businesses with moats at sensible prices and then holding onto them for long periods of time

So the basic foundation of thinking about economic moats and competitive advantage is that-- shocker-- capitalism works,

And I was trained to think about the competitive moats of companies-- Coke's brand or Costco's low cost service

who are trying to build a software company and can't find a moat that is defensible.

intensive, and also it had a natural moat or protection around it that you didn't have to get creative.

Behind her, a wave splashed into the moat.